I'm writing a story and I need a disease...

Post Reply New Topic

I'm going to introduce a major conflict in the short novel I'm thinking of writing by afflicting one of my characters with a disease. Problem is, I can't think of the perfect disease.

I want to give my character a disease that
(1) is horrible, frightening, debilitating, incurable, painful, and preferably deadly.
(2) is progressive/degenerative.
(3) usually presents or can present in adolescence---symptoms first show at age 12-19---with no symptoms in childhood (Huntington's, cystic fibrosis, and Tay-Sach's are thus out).

Bonus points:
(1) disease is rare
(2) CNS involvement
(3) death within ten years of diagnosis is the norm

Misc. guidelines:
(1) infections, cancers, autoimmune diseases, genetic disorders, and causeless wonders are all allowed.
(2) my character is not exploring the wilds of Africa and drinking unfiltered water therein, so she is unlikely to pick up rare third-world viruses like Lassa, O'hnyongnyong, or monkeypox. My character is also unlikely to have acquired a sexually-transmitted disease of any kind.

GO!

Thinking?

you seem just fine at coming up with diseases.. but ill sayy ummm Eboli ? ...

Lupus!.. i knew someone who had it.

Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis

AIDS?

When I was a teacher's aide, I ran across a girl who was afflicted with a fatal degenerative disease. I think it was called something like Barrett's Disease. It usually appears around age eight, and the afflicted usually loses the ability to see first, then loses the ability to talk. It is usually accompanied by infrequent seizures. Eventually they can no longer get around on their own, and by the age of 25 (early 20s usually) lose the ability to breathe, resulting in death. As I understand it, it is quite unusual, I think out of a school district with some 20,000 students there was only one afflicted student. It is not necessarily painful, but I would think that losing the ability to communicate entirely with the outside world would be quite terrifying. I don't actually know that much about it, you'd have to do a google or wiki. That to me would seem like the best candidate. ALS may not fully appear until one's early 20s, and MS appears even later. Few children have AIDS nowadays, pregnant mothers with HIV are given retroviral drugs so their babies won't get it, and the blood transfusion system is almost 100% effective at screening it out (Ryan White got AIDS from a transfusion). If one is not a gay male, the most likely scenario is for a woman to get it from a bisexual male. IV drug users sometimes get it too.

ALS almost always waits until after age 50 to start its assault on you. MS typically shows up in the 20s and 30s.

Sorry if anyone is weirded out by this thread. Writing is a cruel business; it is remarkable the horrors we must visit upon those we create.

Hmmmmmm...me likes...

hmm...that's not really rare...well i guess in our society(usa) idiotic thinking has gone up and inquisitive thinking has gone down. i find people are just thinking these days and not listening to the wise words of charlie chaplin, "We think too much and feel too little" right, i'm getting off topic...where was i...

oh, yes, i think that overthinking would a be good problem for your person.

skin cancer? brain cancer? cancer brain? what?

oh, right. you know bacterial skin eating disease is always fun but, there's a cure for that...*researches horrible, uncurable diseases*

hmm...http://listverse.com/health/top-10-incurable-diseases/

the jakob disease looks interesting.

insomia can be a very horrible and degenerative to a person if it continues over time.

last one i can think of is parkinson's disease.

do I win?!


Woohooooo!!

Bladder infection

what about alzheimer its deadly rare and it might create a sad mood in the story (because it makes the person forget things depends on how worse it is and its deadly)
might be best desease that creates sadnes maybe let the personage forget who someone is at a sertent point or something
read this: http://www.nia.nih.gov/Alzheimers/Publi ... adfact.htm

lol wow.. n one follow the guidelines.. this aint a story competition he needs a disease that fits the guidelines.

Wait...lupus is rarely fatal anymore.

Stupid advances in medical science. Oh, they're great for sick people, but did anyone think about the writers? You can hardly give a character a death sentence anymore.

As of now, the Big C appears to be my best bet. There are still a few ferocious, untreatable leukemias
out there. Pancreatic cancer, galbladder duct cancer, and cerebral gliomas also give you a prognosis comparable to that of jumping off the sears tower.

Alzheimer's has shown up in adolescents, but to the average reader, who has little medical knowledge, it would push the limits of believability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycythemia

My dad had it and it ultimately killed him. I think it can develop at any age. Though rare, it can become Leukemia, which is what happened to dad. If not treated regularly, it can be fatal even without becoming cancer.

Leprosy, I know its basically non existent now days, but lets say a government done some creative experimentation on it and some got lose on an unsuspecting world, or someone excavated an old frozen grave and unexpectedly got infected.